


Thirty Year Divide (Reshuffle and Repeat)

by Nikolaila



Category: Bleach
Genre: M/M, time loops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24380284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nikolaila/pseuds/Nikolaila
Summary: Time resets and many loops on they still haven’t determined how. But maybe it’s time for a break.
Relationships: Kurosaki Ichigo/Urahara Kisuke
Comments: 3
Kudos: 157
Collections: UraIchi Week 2020





	Thirty Year Divide (Reshuffle and Repeat)

**Author's Note:**

> For UraIchi Week Day 1: Time travel
> 
> It’s the time warp. They’re actually exhausting instead of fun.

_Rukongai Outer Districts, Abandoned Hidden Bunker_

In the innermost chamber equipment still hums but the power is fading. The lights are dim, several pieces of equipment flash or beep discordantly trying to gain attention for maintenance from decades gone hands, and some have gone completely dark. On a center wooden table a machine whirrs loudly and with an odd hitch in tone every few minutes on one end of the table while the center of the table has a colorful faintly glowing spherical rock on a slightly tilted stand. The power flicks off and takes only a few seconds to resume. But it’s enough to cause the loudly whirring machine to change internal rotation speeds causing it to rock on the table hard. The table’s slightly warped wooden legs rock, causing the sphere to fall off its stand and roll slowly towards the edge, then fall and shatter once it hit the floor.   
  


Once the fragments settled on the floor in a scattered pile of strangely colorful glittering shards, they begin to glow in an ominous fashion before time simply stops. Then suddenly it begins in reverse first slowly reassembling the stone and placing it back upon its stand before rapidly speeding up until the decay of years of abandonment unworks itself; only slowing down towards the end when the stone’s ominous glowing starts to fade. When time reasserts itself into heading forward again the stone resembles nothing more interesting than a sphere of clear quartz and three decades of abandonment have been removed from the room.   
  


* * *

Urahara Kisuke wakes up and suppresses a groan. That is undeniably the Shōten’s ceiling before they had painted it, well Ichigo had painted most of the details that made up the midnight sky. He remembers that set of singe marks that currently marks it rather well. Seeing it means that the odd thirty year loop Ichigo and he were caught in hadn’t been broken by the actions they’d taken.

He sighed and watched Ichigo’s head rise and fall with the action where it rested on his chest. Kisuke ran his fingers though Ichigo’s hair while he thought.

He should go write down everything they’ve been through in the journals, to ensure a complete if summarized record exists outside of his memory, but it’s tedious to write down five-hundred seventy years of experience. Of eighteen failed attempts to exit the loop. Of the first thirty years that they didn’t know were to be forgotten as time folded and snapped back and they were the only ones to remember what had happened. He’d much rather lay here under Ichigo’s grounding weight and pet him. All warm skin and firm muscle and lazily pliant with sleep.  
  
It’s still odd to see the stress lines and scars Ichigo’s picked up vanish after each loop. Ichigo’s twenty-six going on six-hundred, and Kisuke really doesn’t want to think of his own age, he’s getting far too close to being older than Kyouraku and Juushirou.

Still, he needs to go write the summary down. If only so he can throw it at walls when his frustration over the whole ridiculous situation gets too great. It makes a decent substitute for banging his head on various surfaces, Ichigo hadn’t liked that habit very much.  
  


Kisuke reluctantly squirmed out from underneath a still sleeping Ichigo and got up to fetch a stack of notebooks and mug of pens. Inevitably one would run out in the middle of a word. At least this way he didn’t have to get up and fetch more.

After twenty minutes of writing he heard Ichigomutter and wake up behind him. 

“Again?” 

“Again.” Kisuke confirmed and continued his unhurried summarization of the eighth loop. That one had involved too many political games and if he never had to deal with even a fraction of it again it would still be too soon for his tastes. At least the blackmail he’d found out about was still useful. But he’d hand it off in pieces to Yoruichi, she loved that sort of intrigue and detail digging.

He heard Ichigo slam his face into the pillow and start swearing; even if the words were obscured the tone was definitely swearing. When he finished Kisuke could feel Ichigo’s eyes regarding his back. Without bothering to turn around he asked.

“Have any thoughts on the loops Ichigo-koi?”

“No new ones. Just some selfish thoughts.”

Ichigo sounded almost hesitant, which was odd. He put the pen down and turned around.

“Oh? Do share those with me, your selfish thoughts are often entertaining to put into practice.” He tilted his fond smile towards an almost leering smirk, hoping to startle Ichigo out of his mood. Timidness to ask questions shouldn’t reside on Ichigo’s face, well outside of playtime anyway. Which thankfully it did, the reaction was replaced with the more normal soft scowl with a faint bloom of color on his cheeks.

“I was wondering if we could take more of this loop as something like a vacation? No world ending events happen or are being built up to happen and the only irritation we’ve regularly run into is standard hollow attacks and the fact that we’re the only people looping. We could still look into things, but honestly I think we need to take more breaks. Also I’m turning six-hundred in this loop, I’ve been told opening a new century is important to shinigami.”

“It can be, and I don’t see why not. What did you have in mind?” It sounded reasonable enough, Kisuke would admit that he did sometimes have issues with tunnel vision on projects and stepping back could help.

Ichigo started ticking ideas off on his fingers. “Well, the full study you wanted to do on my shifted joints and flexibility when I pull on hollow reiatsu could be entertaining. None of the Vizards expect anyone to be a willing test subject of yours so their expressions will be funny.”

“Doable, go on.” Kisuke made a mental note on how Ichigo was still willing to be a test subject which was trusting of him. So cute.

“Pick a day where no one will be in the Shōten except for us and I’ll let you use the body markers to draw all over my skin and I’ll either be naked or wear a fundoshi for the entire day.”

“My, my, that sounds like a wonderful gift for my birthday, thank you in advance.” He wishes he had his fan, that was a rather erotic image his lover had conveyed.

“Shut up. I know that you complained about a lack of internet footage of sex acts you want to learn about before attempting.” He flicked his fingers at Kisuke before he could express any confusion. “Hush, it was back when we weren’t aware of the looping. Think you made a comment about that being an irritation around my fortieth birthday. Something about how the manual you found wasn’t descriptive enough to figure out if it was something we would enjoy attempting to do.”

“Well now I’m curious, what do you want to do with that knowledge?”

“I know you know how to make camera flies. We film ourselves having sex in each position in that overly extensive book you have and post it to some corner of the internet. Have subtitles with the instructions on how to manage the positioning too.”

“You’ve lost quite a lot of body shyness and modesty haven’t you?”

Ichigo shrugged. “Either we loop and the footage vanishes. Or we don’t and nobody we know would go intentionally looking for it. And if they found it they likely wouldn’t believe it was us.”

“Our names are fairly distinctive.”

“And how often do we actually use them when having sex?”

“Not very.”

“There you go.”

“I noticed that your list of things to relax is skewed heavily towards my own pleasure. Not to say you wouldn’t get anything out of them, but still, what about your wants?”

“I’d like to see a few more festivals, attend some book releases, maybe learn origami.” Ichigo gave a shrug. “I like spending time with you, so it’s not terribly hard to please me, you know that.”

“Just because thats true, doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to see if you’ve heard of something you might enjoy trying.”

“Fair enough.” Ichigo yawned. “When you finish up the loop summary come back to bed I’m gonna sleep for a couple more hours.” And laid back down on the futon and passed out.  
  


Kisuke gave a little smile to the cuteness of that image. Then turned back to the summarization effort. It was almost as boring as doing monthly inventory, but it needed to be done so that he’d have a consolidated record of what didn’t work on the loop breaking effort. But nothing was stopping them from enjoying themselves a bit more while they looked. Hopefully it wouldn’t take too many more repetitions to figure what caused the loop and defeat its conditions.  


* * *

In the underground lab, the sphere that looked like a ball of clear quartz started to slowly absorb the reishi present in the air gaining a faint sheen of color in its depths.

**Author's Note:**

> To the server. Fiends though they are.


End file.
